Important New Survey

[Ernie of Maine (imported)]

The Education of Kevin Hsu

[quote="JesusA (imported)" ti

me=1520023320]
It is important that there be

some new, young academic who will devote time and energy to research and writing about the voluntary eunuch community. A lot has been accomplished in the past few years, but there is still much more that needs to be done.

At 75, I’m beginning to wind down my own research and writing. I lost my entire set of books and notes in the Wine Country Fire. I will need to start over from scratch for any documentation toward more publications. The outline, notes, and all reference materials for the book that I had promised are now part of a large ash heap and I don’t have enough years left to recreate them. (My library had over 6000 volumes and I’m now up to about two dozen.)

Kevin is young, bright, and enthusiastic. He is planning to devote his career to research and writing about sex and gender issues. The survey is his first attempt to understand the eunuch community and a number of you have pointed out flaws that he needs to be aware of. It’s a learning experience for him and all of your responses to his survey will help to guide his future work. We want him to continue to consider eunuchs as part of his field of interest.

Answer honestly and you will help Kevin to focus better on what is most important. You want
[/quote]
to help him to understand what needs to be done next.

With Jesus indorsement I now understand he is new and well get better we hope.

[Zebedeee (imported)]

The Education of Kevin Hsu

[quote="JesusA (imported)" ti

me=1520023320]
It is important that there be

some new, young academic who will devote time and energy to research and writing about the voluntary eunuch community. A lot has been accomplished in the past few years, but there is still much more that needs to be done.

At 75, I’m beginning to wind down my own research and writing. I lost my entire set of books and notes in the Wine Country Fire. I will need to start over from scratch for any documentation toward more publications. The outline, notes, and all reference materials for the book that I had promised are now part of a large ash heap and I don’t have enough years left to recreate them. (My library had over 6000 volumes and I’m now up to about two dozen.)

Kevin is young, bright, and enthusiastic. He is planning to devote his career to research and writing about sex and gender issues. The survey is his first attempt to understand the eunuch community and a number of you have pointed out flaws that he needs to be aware of. It’s a learning experience for him and all of your responses to his survey will help to guide his future work. We want him to continue to consider eunuchs as part of his field of interest.

Answer honestly and you will help Kevin to focus

better on what is most important. You want
[/quote]
to help him to understand what needs to be done next.

Okay, point taken. I’ll have another look at it later in the week, when I’m in the right mood.

It may be a knee jerk reaction, but it felt like something which is for me at least an issue of gender identity, is being treated as a fetish or masturbatory fantasy. Some of the questions about sexual attraction turned my stomach and I found myself closing the page in disgust, feeling a little upset at having been asked.

But I guess that any data collected is useful (even if it is mostly zeros), and I should stop being such a prissy snowflake and see if I can provide Kevin with some potentially useful information..!

[minuteman (imported)]

I was happy to take the survey. Sure, there were questions that didn't apply to me, but I didn't get my panties bunched because the Kevin didn't ask the questions I wanted to answer!

The only criticism I have was the frequent need to provide a dissertation. I had neither the time or the inclination for that, so my answers ended up quite terse. I'm not certain how useful such narrative answers are going to be from a statistical point of view, either. If the results Kevin gets aren't meaningful, then I'm sure he'll learn from that, which will help him construct better surveys in the future.

[Zebedeee (imported)]

Sure, there were questions that didn't apply to me, but I didn't get my panties bunched because the Kevin didn't ask the questions I wanted to answer!

I’m blaming my hormones!!

[sexualitylab (imported)]

Thank you for the very kind and thoughtful words, Jesus. And thank you also for the many years you have devoted to studying eunuchs and eunuch wannabes, important work that has taught us a lot and helped pave the way to the work I am doing now.

I would like to again respond to the criticisms raised in this thread, all of which have been very helpful and appreciated. I am learning a lot from this discussion and hope to continue learning more. Thank you.

First, I want to reiterate that any data on sexual arousal and fantasy will be critically important to the results. Looking at the responses that have come in so far, many have endorsed varying degrees of sexual arousal and fantasy related to castration and being castrated. Many others have not endorsed any sexual arousal or fantasy. Having the responses from eunuchs and eunuch wannabes who vary across the wide spectrum of sexuality will help with a more clear, accurate understanding of sexuality and identity among this community. We want to collect data from as representative of a sample as we can get (acknowledging the limitation that no sample will truly be representative), and so I believe we would be remiss if this did not include those who do not find castration to be sexual.

Second, I should point out that I am mostly a researcher of sexuality and identity, and not strictly a researcher of

the eunuch/eunuch wannabe community

per se. For that reason, I have focused on aspects of sexuality and identity among eunuchs and eunuch wannabes, because I think there is a lot to learn there. I did not focus on those aspects because I think that eunuchs and eunuch wannabes are all sexually inclined in some way (of course that is an empirical question). If I were a medical researcher, perhaps I would have focused more on hormone use and medical conditions in my questions, although there are a few like that.

Also, to minuteman: I asked a handful of open-ended questions (requiring narrative answers) in hopes of learning more about sexuality and identity among eunuchs and eunuch wannabes without the constraints of a numerical scale. This community, especially with respect to certain aspects of sexuality and identity, has not been well studied, and so having these open-ended responses might lead to some interesting new insights or directions for future research. I think both quantitative and qualitative data are useful.

[Peter47-NL (imported)]

I didn't see anything of the servey until now, but I'll reply. It will take some time because as a Dutchman, English is a foreign language for me, difficult to read and even more difficult to write.

[Fixet (imported)]

I also did the survey.

The Education of Kevin Hsu

[quote="J

esusA (imported)" time=1520238720]
At 75, I’m beginning to wind down my own research and writing. I lost my entire set of books and notes in the Wine Country Fire. I will need to start over from scratch for any documentation toward more publications. The outline, notes, and all reference materials for the book that I had promised are now part of a large ash heap and I don’t have enough yea

rs left to recreate t

hem. (My library had over 6000 volumes and I’m now up to about two dozen.)
[/quote]


That is very sad to hear.

[zeebster (imported)]

Now that I have time, I find that the server isn't responding. I can only view the first page, the introduction.

I will try again later.

As far as the title of the survey, when translated from the strange language of "Academia", my guess is that the survey is/was going to be used for two different groups, and that sliding a bar back to zero would indicate "N/A" for "not applicable".

I just tried to do the survey and had the same problem.

[Losethem (imported)]

Knowing he's new gives some perspective.

On a friendlier note, if he's to continue engaging us, at least those of us who are real, he needs to start off with the mechanics of this, not the sexual aspects and fantasy questions. Those can have a place later. I was frustrated because a person saying they are a researcher came in, and started asking us all sorts of sex questions in that survey. It felt like an elaborate version of what we've seen here in the past ad nauseam. It felt more like he was looking for wanking material than actual research.

Unfortunately there was no going into how we got to where we are, and when the survey was notified we were already post-op, it kept asking us questions which were irrelevant. The survey design was very poor, given abilities of modern technology. I found about 90% of what I was asked was either inappropriate or irrelevant. I felt a bit objectified by it.

[PetJohan (imported)]

I took the survey and found the questions didn't lead towards any of my feelings, it seamed to come back to fetish without taking into consideration that some of us are not transwomen or dont want some sexual gratification from being castrated, I mean it can only happen once and its the result that's desired, by me, not the action, hell I'm good with a general and would be happy going to sleep and waking up with it done, put me in bed and i'll be happy to sleep the rest of the day,night and the next day.

We read the same survey and reached virtually the same conclusions. When asked to consider what it might be like to play the role of a castrated man, I had an easy answer: "I played the role of a castrated man on the day I was castrated. Reviews from my Urological Surgeon, his team and the Anaesthesiologist were generally positive although one did say I should have strung out goin to sleep a bit longer to add a piquancy of perhaps Alarm?" Like you, I came away with the eerie feeling that what I was contributing to was the potential of a group of grad students to get off their intellectual jollies by implying answers from horribly written questions. Nice to find another like minded person sitting on the side of the road spitting water melon seeds to see if we can lob more than one across the 5 without getting slobber on someone's wind screen.